About ISF

The Swedish Social Insurance Inspectorate (Inspektionen för socialförsäkringen, ISF) is an independent supervisory agency for the Swedish social insurance system. The ISF is an agency of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, and reports to the Minister for Social Security, and the Swedish public.

Area of supervision

The ISF area of supervision and control is social insurance and related areas. Its remit is primarily over three agencies:

Examples of social insurance benefits that are subject to the ISF’s scrutiny are child and family benefits, health insurance benefits and pensions.

Areas related to the field of social insurance include the interfaces between social insurance and regional and local authorities and other non-governmental entities, and similar areas such as the labour market.

The ISF’s objectives are system supervision and efficiency analysis and evaluation, which means that it is outside the ISF’s remit to take a position in individual cases.The ISF does not represent the Government on legal issues, and nor does the ISF have normative functions or any authority to impose sanctions. Finally, the ISF is not responsible for providing the general public with information about social insurance legislation or social insurance administration.

If you would like to complain about an individual decision, you should contact the authority, for example the Swedish Social Insurance Agency or the Swedish Pensions Agency, which issued the decision. Please note that you must submit any request for reconsideration within a certain time period (which should be stated in your letter of notification).

If you believe that the decision of a responsible agency is incorrect, you may appeal to the Administrative Court. Your appeal should be sent to the agency that issued the decision, which should in turn forward it to the court, after verifying that it has arrived within the relevant time period (which should be stated in the letter of notification).

How we work

The ISF’s work is mainly conducted on a project basis and is presented in the form of publicly available reports.

The projects are commissioned by the Government or initiated by the agency.

The ISF’s work plan is prepared on an annual basis. The plan is authorised by the Director General and is publicly available on our website (in Swedish). There should also be a multi-year plan to ensure that all major areas in the field of social insurance are regularly reviewed.

The projects are usually undertaken by multidisciplinary teams. The ISF’s expertise includes law, economics, political science, business administration, sociology, behavioural science, mathematics, statistics, medicine and public health, and administration. About one third of the employees hold a Doctoral degree.